“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

Month: April 2017

“The most beautiful people I’ve known are those who have known defeat,suffering, and loss and found their way out of the depths. These incredible people are sensitive, appreciative and compassionate about life. Beautiful people don’t just happen.”~ Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

“In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself.”~Anna Quindlen

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, Good Evening… I think I have everyone covered.

I’m on Round 7 of the Mandala Madness. Phew. Round 6 had some interesting quirks that hopefully, I won’t be repeating the same errors. No worries, it’s not with the pattern at all. It was totally my yarn choices. I chose my light turquoise yarn to do the shells in Round 39 which was a huge mistake because in Round 41 you are using the back loop of Round 39. You’re probably thinking so… well the turquoise wasn’t a Caron or a Redheart yarn which hold up very well with more complicated stitches. The turquoise was a Bernina product and it was very disappointing in this case. It kept splitting apart and stretching which means I had to work slower and pick up a lower stitch behind it to help reinforce the back stitch. 😦

I decided after this frustrating round I would read ahead instead of simply following the video. Esther is great but I need to plan so I am not stressed with my work. It defeats the whole meditation process if you’re frustrated.

The designer’s website provided me with all the tools I needed to plan ahead. Wow, it’s not a lap size blanket as I originally thought to glance at the videos. It’s 7 feet, okay I’m working on a queen size bed project. I can do this. It’s 111 rounds. I can do that too.

Then I got thinking how to best maximize my color usage. I decided on 18 colors that would give me the vibrancy I am looking for in the finished product. These colors are very prominent in nature and in my home. That’s even better. Eighteen colors means I will be repeating the colors 6 times if I want to have a color balance throughout the project. I can do this.

Since we last discussed colors introduced I added white to my mandala because I wanted innocence to be among my meditative journey. As I completed the white round and was moving on to the next round I remembered how quickly as a child I lost that innocence in my life. I was only nine when my father decided to steal my childhood from me.

I saw her nine-year-old trusting eyes

trying to cope with her father’s lies.

Her cheeks streaked with silent tears

whenever he tossed back a few beers.

She felt the guilt inside her swell

her young body revolted with the smell.

Needless to say, my color change became abrupt in the next round from white to black. Just like in my life, innocence shattered so did the colors in my mandala. Unfortunately, so did my peaceful crocheting experience.

I wrote in my journal and wrote 2 poems discussing the abuse I faced as a child. Overall, it became a productive writing day and helped me get back on track for my next color choice which is gold.

I chose gold because I know how important it is to strive every day to be your best. It’s often said that change is the only constant in life. Yet humans are evolutionarily predisposed to resist change because of the risk associated with it. I feel change is essential to our existence, granted there will be the moment of relapse as I had yesterday but it’s important to recognize that you can’t linger in the painful memory you must move on.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished. -Benjamin Franklin

I cannot say whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is they must change if they are to get better. -Georg C. Lichtenberg

I chuckled reading this because many times in my youth, my brother would say to me you are so much better at being a boy than I am. I disappoint Dad as a son and you disappoint Mom asa daughter.
I try to draw on my tomboy times writing male characters. It’s not easy. I find it easier to discuss situations with male friends or to go to male oriented events and absorb all that I can about their reactions.

Cross-gender writing is nothing new. When Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel, Jane Eyre, (1847) was published under Bronte’s non-gendered pen name, Currer Bell, huge arguments broke out in Victorian England as to whether or not the author was male or female. One heavy-hitting critic voted male because the novel reflected a “manly” prose. I like to think that some hundred seventy years later, we’ve come a long way.

All of this is to say that I, a male, don’t feel too uncomfortable writing a novel with a female protagonist. For point of view, I’m using third person limited. The protagonist is a public-school biology teacher. She’s twenty-five, moderately good-looking, intelligent, and single.

I realize that creating a protagonist whose gender is opposite of one’s own can be tricky business. A huge mistake any writer can make is to think: “Hey, this is easier than I thought.” At that point, one may…

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggles, known loss, and found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

This short story is a great tribute to people who have suffered. I thought the demonstration of how to help a person regain safety was encouraging. One step at a time from a person who has been there. I’m very lucky to have found my Vic, he has encouraged me to grow beyond the dark times with loving kindness.

This prose piece could be triggering for readers with a history of trauma and flashbacks.

It is the flood of emotion that always makes me flee. I am scared, angry, unsafe, fighting panic and the need to flee like a wounded gazelle being chased by a lion. The triggers are unpredictable but the reaction is not. It is like someone is ripping my chest open, using a rib spreader, exposing the fragile membranes around my heart to the glare of light. I clutch my hand to my chest, as though I can hold the gaping edges of my body closed the way one would the sides of an unbuttoned shirt.

Gratefully, I make it to the sanctuary of the bedroom before the tears start to escape. I do not turn on the light. The key is to make myself small. I sit on the floor, back against the bed, feet…

Younger people are putting off marriage, children and buying homes because they lack financial security — unstable jobs and too much student loan debt.

That’s one of the interpretations of a new report from the Census Bureau on Millenials. (1)

In looking at generational change, the report compares 18 to 34-year-olds in 2016 versus 1975. In looking at just the older portion of this group, 25 to 34-year-olds, there are striking differences:

1975: 45% lived on their own, were working, had married and had a child.

2016: 24% live on their own, are working, have married and have a child.

From the point of view of the economy, the difference is huge. Buying a home drives spending on furniture and appliances, as well as painters and a range of other services. Having children drives demand for larger cars and clothing. Doing neither reduces spending in all of these categories.

As a poet I cannot go gently, I must write. We are living in a new literary era which I feel is now the poetry of social connections. There has always been a long tradition of political activism in poetry. But with the internet, it has become the new Avante Garde.

“I see protest poetry as a genuine means of encouraging someone to feel the inconsistencies, the horror of the lives we are living. Social protest is saying that we do not have to live this way. If we feel deeply, and we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will find the germ of our answers to bring about change. Because once we recognize what it is, we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. And when they do not, we will ask, ‘Why don’t they?’ And it is the asking that will lead us inevitably toward change.” —Audre Lorde

Shelley, Longfellow, Whitman, Eliot, Plath, Sexton, Lennon, Thomas, Angelou, Nelson, Davis, Lorde, just to name a few poets who chose poetry as a means to give social injustices a voice. Much of what these writers vocalized in their poems gave a voice to people of similar experiences. However, their words are also a charge to me, to us all…. to not continue feeling comfortable with the privileges enjoyed because they often came at a cost to others.

Jane Hirshfield said in a recent NY Times article that poems are more visible right now because of the difficult times we are facing. It is ironic for a poet because when there is not abundant poetry it means times are okay, and their craft is overlooked. When times are dire poetry becomes prominent because it provides comfort in difficult times to the masses. As poets, we must learn to ride the waves.

The recent resurgence of protest poems reflect the strains of our communities and our very existence. The New York Times says the flood of protest poems recently stands apart from earlier eras in both quantity and intensity. I wonder if it is because the poems that appear today in social media speak with urgency and social responsibility in a time that it is so desperately needed.

History has shown people turn to poetry in times of crisis, and unfortunately, we are definitely facing dark times on this planet we all call home. Every day, around the world change, is happening and those changes are not promising.

Imperfectly Perfect By Lyn CrainPeople Saw It at The Time Mismatched Yet Perfectly PairedIdealism AndHorrific Brutality Up-close and Unsettled Inspired by What Lies Beneath Purposely Seduced and Betrayed We SeeBelief is PotentEvery AngleMismatched Yet Perfectly PairedWe Understand The WorldDoesn’t Change For Better Or Worse

Live

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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night~ Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

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American Dream by Lyn Crain

To understand
The world
Fight For
Injustice…

Fight
Old Boy Mentality
And
Small Talk

See it from
Every angle
Where
Rage
Intersects
Our own
Chaos and Bliss…

“Before drifting away entirely, he found himself reflecting—not for the first time—on the peculiarity of adults. Thet took laxatives, liquor, or sleeping pills to drive away their terrors so that sleep would come, and their terrors were so tame and domestic: the job, the money, what the teacher will think if I can’t get Jennie nicer clothes, does my wife still love me, who are my friends. They were pallid compared to the fears every child lies cheek and jowl with in his dark bed, with no one to confess to in hope of perfect understanding but another child. There is no group therapy or psychiatry or community social services for the child who must cope with the thing under the bed or in the cellar every night, the thing which leers and capers and threatens just beyond the point where vision will reach. The same lonely battle must be…